'Dobbs paints as though the world has to be met head-on: with looking, nerve, structure and paint.'
John Dobbs is a painter of real things: flowers on a table, birds, buildings, fields, figures, interiors, motorbikes, machinery, weather, light. What makes the work compelling is not the subject alone, but the way he finds it in paint. His pictures have the feeling of something being wrestled into clarity - not over-finished, not polished into prettiness, but looked at hard until the right marks begin to hold.
There is a toughness and honesty to his painting. Dobbs works from life wherever possible, often outside, responding to the subject in front of him with urgency and concentration. He has described painting as a search through colour and shape, allowing the image to emerge through the build-up of paint. That sense of search remains visible in the finished works. The brushwork is alive; the forms are felt as much as drawn; the surface carries the pressure of looking.
His early training as an engineering draughtsman gives the paintings a strong underlying structure, but his touch is anything but mechanical. A still life can feel direct and unsentimental. A flower painting can have weight and awkwardness as well as beauty. A motorbike becomes a study in mass, curve and attitude. A landscape is not scenery, but a lived encounter with place.
Dobbs belongs naturally within the New English Art Club's tradition of painting from observation, yet his work avoids any sense of gentility. It is robust, intelligent, unshowy and full of character - painting made by someone who trusts the eye, the hand and the moment.